Globalisation-oriented privatisation was first introduced in all service sectors in the 1980s in India; it grew phenomenally after 1991 when India succumbed to the World Bank-IMF and WTO-led policies of restructuring and stabilisation. Road transportation, shipping, air transport, finance, insurance, health care, education, tourism, communication, education, power generation and distribution and many other sectors are heading for more and more privatisation. Even the support services in production units are being privatised. These services include canteen jobs, dusting and cleaning, security in buildings, teaching, hospitals and nursing, office assistance and maintenance. The privitisation of the entire service sector, including the police services, can be forseen.

Role and Image of the Police

The police force performs sovereign functions of the state — the maintenance of law and order is entirely in the domain of the government. Internal security is to be provided to all citizens, irrespective of colour, creed and, above all, economic status. In other words, the rich and the poor are entitled to equal treatment without any discrimination in the matter of provision of security. It is as sacred to democracy as the principle of one person, one vote.

The basic philosophy of the Indian police today is elucidated in the Police Act of 1861. Its primary purpose is to contain trouble after it occurs, whether it is mob violence or individual criminality (K.S. Subramanian, ‘Police reforms: creative dialogue needed’, India Together, 1 February 2006, http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/feb/gov-padcrole.htm). However, the police force in every state is defamed. It is considered inadequate, untrained and ill equipped, inefficient, corrupt and discourteous (R.K. Raghavan, `On police reforms: An open letter to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam`, Frontline, Vol. 19, August 17-30, 2002: http://flonnet.com/fl1917/19171170.htm; Arvind Verma, `A uniform betrayal`, India Together, June 2004, http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/jun/gov-betray.htm). A majority of law-abiding Indians would like to avoid stepping into a police station. Nor would they like to be visited by a policeman in public view. Those who have visited a police station will tell tales of horror and disgust. The specific charges hurled by the common man are that the police are corrupt, brutal and insensitive to the poor.

Perhaps, the most damaging accusation is that the police are biased in favour of the majority community and do not protect the minorities when there is religious tension. Consider what happened in Gujarat recently and how the police there have been squarely charged with looking the other way when fundamentalists were indulging in savage behaviour. Consider also the more recent incidents of police action in Gurgaon against the workers, in Nandigram against the villagers, in PASCO-hit tribal villages against the tribals in Orissa and in Mumbai during the communal riots in which the police behaved savagely. In these situations, the police faced political pressure and influences. 

In one public interest litigation, the Supreme Court has directed the governments to implement police reforms, within a target date. The government set up the Police Act Drafting Committee (PADC), led by Soli Sorabji, in 2005. The Committee submitted its report with important recommendations but the government has not taken any action on it. Consider also that the uncared-for recommendations (1978-81) of the National Police Commission (NPC) in independent India lie buried in the dark caverns of the Union Home Ministry. The Commission had submitted eight reports and analysed various facets and areas of police functioning and suggested measures for improvement. The states have always expressed their unwillingness to conduct any reform process.

Why is the government reluctant to implement long pending reforms in the police force? Is it to pursue privatisation? The inaction by governments to address systemic problems in the police and other security forces is part of a strategy to undermine public confidence in the ability of governments and other public institutions to provide adequate policing. It is no accident that as this continues and the market for private security agencies and corporations grows, the government is actively facilitating the expansion of this market and the entry of private players. More generally, the globalisation agenda of the World Bank and the IMF form a background for deliberate inaction in the police reforms agenda (K.S. Subramanian, 2006).

Facilitating the Privatisation of Policing

The globalisation policy agenda of the government and neo-globalisation projects of corporates and MNCs necessitate complementing and supplementing the existing police forces. In recent years, especially after the advent of Washington consensus-based globalisation, state after state has been shedding this responsibility and the business of providing security to its citizens is being privatised. In many parts of the world, the state is compelled to reduce police protection and security to the common people because of a shortage of funds for increasing the strength of the security forces adequately. Under the Washington consensus, most states have landed themselves in financial difficulties (Girish Mishra, `Implications of Privatizing Public Security`, ZNET, 23 July, 2006 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10630). In the present socio-economic scenario, with the spurt of corporates and infrastructure development projects, and the ever-increasing economic and financial activities, the provision of security and safety by state-owned police is seen as ‘just inadequate’ to provide security cover both to individuals, institutions such as private schools and to the corporate sector. Trade and industry are confronted with theft, pilferage, forgery, infringement of trademarks, explosions, fires, arson, sabotage, and so on.

The importance of private security systems may be gauged and evaluated also by the growing erosion of public confidence in government-operated security agencies. Managers of industry and trade find it increasingly difficult to rely on state police and increasingly necessary to engage adequately trained and integrated security staff to protect their personnel and material, safeguard their proprietary data and classified trade information, prevent and control disasters, and protect wealth in their production and residential areas. In addition, state after state has been shedding this responsibility and the business of providing security to its citizens is being privatized. Not only the privately run but also the government-funded and government-managed institutions have been entrusting this responsibility to private security agencies. These situations facilitate the emergence of security contractors and security agencies, creating a large market for recruiting agencies, foreign security agencies, and safety and security equipment worth several million rupees.

The Market for Security and Protection Services

Maximum security is a popular concept in India. Besides physical barriers, alarm systems and guard forces, maximum security requires a total integrated system. It includes surveillance systems, access control devices, alarms and sensors, fire detection and protection equipment, and physical equipment. Presently, technological developments in security equipment are on the fast track. The security equipment market includes sophisticated, world-class technology that can be adjusted to consumers’ needs. The security and safety equipment market includes government, public sector, international institutions, stock markets, financial institutions, goldsmiths and jewellery shops, real estate developers, retail outlets, industrial and commercial facilities, private homes and others. The Indian protection market today is estimated at close to US $300 million. It is expected to grow approximately by about 8-10 per cent over the next five years.

Today, more than five million people are engaged in this profession in our country and the sector is generating more than one million additional jobs every year. At present, more than 50,000 security agencies are working in the country, all of which are Indian firms. (The government policy bars foreign players in the sector.) The ramifications of the entire range of security services and the conception of privatising police services began with the growth of the mushrooming security agencies, primarily in public sector factories, mines, hospitals, offices and government establishments. The high growth in the private security sector is primarily driven by demand from sectors such as retail, construction, hotel and tourism, and from large manufacturing units. With a number of shopping malls cropping up, there is also a surge in the demand for female security guards, who currently account for about 5 per cent of the workforce in the private security segment. Also, more than 20,000 Indians work as security guards in West Asia and Africa.

Conditions of Work

Let us consider the background of the privitisation of services in general. A consensus was evolved between the government and the employers/ industry in the public sector that the engagement of contract labour in periphery services should not be abolished under the Contract Labour (Abolition & Regulation) Act 1970 even if these are jobs of a regular nature. The law became infractuous, especially Section 10(1), which provides for the abolition of employment through contractors in jobs of a regular nature. Mass scale VRS was initiated and the regular jobs were abolished and contract labourers were hired. Their services are temporary and they are engaged, not employed, on a casual basis. They are deprived of wages, service conditions and labour rights, available to the regular workers. They are denied the right to organise, social security coverage and all legal rights under the labour laws. 

The employees or workers in security agencies are denied their legal rights to minimum wages, provident fund, gratuity and facilities/protections, under the Contract Labour (A&R) Act 1970. Their working hours always exceed 72 hours a week. Their dignity is often offended by the contractor agencies and by the employers who engage them. They are denied the right to unionising and collective bargaining. A hire-and-fire policy is adopted, resulting in a highly flexible labour market of security guards. In such a situation, labour rights and even human rights are reduced to irrelevance for them.

In India and elsewhere, the main motive of private security agencies is to earn as much profit as possible. Hence, the agencies pay the lowest possible wages and extract the maximum amount of work. Working conditions are harsh. An average employee has to work at least 12 hours a day and sometimes his economic needs and lure of overtime payments force him to work up to 15-16 hours a day. He is not provided with housing facilities, medical treatment, paid holidays, provident fund and so on. His service is purely temporary and he does not have a weekly off. So far, the government, whether at the centre or in a state, has not given any heed to the problems and hardships faced by the workers of security agencies. There is no union of workers because leading all-India trade union centres have not bothered about unionising these workers and leading their fight for better working conditions. The high incidence of unemployment among the youth, the increasing exodus from the rural areas, the shrinking job opportunities in the state sector and so on have weakened the bargaining power of workers in private security agencies.

Ramifications

If the trend of privatising public security services continues, the day is not far off when the job of protecting a country from external enemies may be entrusted to international firms who may, with the help of mercenaries, protect the client states. Thus, standing armies may be disbanded and the world may go back to the pre-French Revolution era!

Civil society, political parties and trade unions must take up this issue for public debate, in the Supreme Court, the ILO and the Human Rights Commission. The people of this country are confronted with a situation in which their security and safety are at high risk. This is available only on payment because the government ignores them and does not want any kind of police reforms despite continuous opinions and recommendations from experts, committees, commissions and directions form the Supreme Court. People’s concerns and the concerns of over 5 million workers need to be addressed and unless the hidden agenda of profiteering by corporates from public security and safety is exposed, they will establish a private policing regime. This is more likely to generate anarchy and democracy, and the common people and the working class will suffer the most.